I have nothing to add to Phil's comments (below) although I can explain
in detail the issue of freedom suits; or you can read my book, AN
IMPERFECT UNION:  SLAVERY FEDERALISM AND COMITY (1981, reprinted Lawbook
Exchange, 2001).  Phil's book, and Thomas D. Morris, SOUTHRN SLAVERY AND
THE LAW are the best places to start for criminal law and slavery,

Philip Schwarz wrote:
> Two statements concerning slave trials require some correction. This correction holds for Virginia trials. Others may wish to comment on other colonies' and states' variations. First, criminal trials of slaves protected owners' rights to their human property. In the process, slaves could benefit from the procedural and evidentiary standards that were supposed to be honored in such trials. Second, strictly speaking, slaves were not allowed to sue for their freedom. Why, then, all the freedom suits? That's because the the person's preexisting status was the obvious
> matter adjudicated in such trials. If the freedom suit resulted in recognition of the plaintiff's freedom, then a free person had sued. If the verdict was that the person suing for her or his freedom was not free, then that plaintiff had had no right to sue. Hence much of the testimony in freedom suits focused on actions that may or may not have manumitted the person in question before the freedom suit was tried.
>
> I'm sure Paul Finkelman can comment on the way this freedom suit process affected Dred Scott.
>
> Philip Schwarz
> Virginia Commonwealth University
>
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--
Paul Finkelman
Chapman Distinguished Professor
University of Tulsa College of Law
3120 East 4th Place
Tulsa, Oklahoma  74104-2499

918-631-3706 (office)
918-631-2194 (fax)

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